Saturday, 7 April 2007

The Tiger Roars

*Photos from www.cricinfo.com

Even though they had upset India in the first round, heavy defeats to Australia and New Zealand meant that no one expected this from Bangladesh! The lowest ranked one day team totally outplayed the top ranked one and opened up the Super Eights. This was even bigger than their win over India and it was wonderful to watch the youthful exuberance of the Bangladesh team as they outclassed the South Africans and made a mockery of the rankings system. What the result has also done is given hope to West Indies and England and Tuesday’s match between West Indies and South Africa in Grenada will now assume much more importance for the South Africans than they would have thought this morning.

The Aussies play the English tomorrow. I can’t stand either team and when they play each other I usually back one or the other depending on the situation. During the 2006 Ashes series, I backed the Aussies because the English media and all of England for that matter were overdoing the whole “we are better than Australia” story in the lead up. They had finally beaten Australia in a series after eighteen years in 2005 and they were parading as the best in the world! 2006 certainly brought them back to earth! In the context of tomorrow’s match an Australian victory will be in West Indies’ favour and so let’s hope for an Aussie administered whipping for the English.